I think the Wildcat was almost the entire problem. I think a normal offense with Pennington and the same backs does about half the damage.

They averaged 4.9 ypc, but it seemed the long runs came out of the wildcat formation.

My impression from last night is that there were two huge problems for the defense. One was scheme. We just never adjusted at all. We were getting overwhelmed at the point of attack and never did anything to address the problem. The second was how much more physical the Dolphins were. Look at how the pile kept getting moved. And Ronnie Brown and Williams kept picking up the extra yard or two or three because we couldn't finish a tackle. Even when we hit them in the backfield, they'd end up with a two yard gain. You just can't give up the garbage yards every play or you always end up in 3d and short. They add up.

Different year, different coordinator... same D. This D looked exactly to me like last year. Did the Colts blitz at all? Was it Pennington, the situations or no Powers who can actually play man to man coverage?

Yes. I think Powers was that important. Jennings got worked.

Re: Blitz...
Kuharsky just posted some numbers:

The Colts brought standard pressure on 29 of 33 pass plays (not counting 2 spikes). They recorded two sacks, an interception and gave up just 4.8 yards per play in standard pressure. Against one extra rusher, Miami quarterback Chad Pennington went 3-4 for 23 yards.

The biggest reason the Colts only had the ball for 15 minutes is simply because they scored so damn fast and easy. The Dolphins defense sucked even more than the Colts. The Colts can't help it if the Dolphins let a scoring "drive" last 12 seconds. Dallas Clark could have had the decency to take a knee a couple of times so the "D" could rest

Also, I think this is not a good game to base opinions about our run defense. Outside of the Wildcat, which Miami does better than anybody else, our run defense was pretty stout.

In the highlights (which are all I'll ever get to review since I don't have a DVR or even cable), I noticed the Colts DL slanting at the snap. I think for most of the big runs, they guessed the wrong direction and slanted the way that the Dolphins were planning to block them. It looks like even though the DTs are bigger, they're still relying on guessing to get penetration, instead of fighting off blocks.

You can't worry about Pennington beating you deep. He's probably not going to. At some point Jennings need to creep up and try to break up or pick off the short outs to Ginn.

A few of those offsides really killed us which is something I doubt we'll see much more of this season.

Agree on Jennings being used. Good defensive players know where the sticks are and use the knowledge to shut those plays down.

Linebacking crew is ordinary. Session has a ways to go from the neck up; thinking too much. Brackett's OK but will always struggle in games like this. He'll look better next week facing a pass heavy team.

Perhaps Ed Johnson put on too much weight? He's significantly heavier (I'd guess 15-20 lbs) than he was his rookie year and even at the beginning of last year. It looks like he's lost a little of his quickness. Could just be rust.

I did a quick and dirty count of the offensive plays (i.e., not counting special teams) and our offense's Peyton's efficiency is a marvel:

Without throwing more than 1 pass to anyone besides Wayne and Clark, he managed to orchestrate 27 points in only 38 offensive plays! That's .71 points per play. By contrast, Miami scored 23 points on 87 plays (.26 points per play). If the Colts had 87 plays, they would score 60 points! Just give him his 4th MVP now.

Don't beat on Brady as if he's himself right now, he's clearly not.

That loss to the Jets is TOM'S FAULT due to three or four unacceptable missteps in the first half.

Plays that he hits 100/100 times before his knee got pretzeled.

Peyton is awesome and that was a great performance by him last night, but even he was a little shaky last fall coming off a much less severe knee operation.

Far too reasonable. JC is either on something or coming off something. Not sure which.

It's the former.

When I can't get my fix is when I bug out.

Trust me, Colts fans understand that Brady isn't right. It's what we tried to tell everyone for months, but all the MSM and Pats fans just kept hammering us with "Brady's fine! He's ahead of schedule! He'll be 100%".

Manning struggled modestly with a far less significant surgery last year. We saw Edge James deal with an ACL. He was never the same guy. Different position for sure, but it takes time to come back.

It was annoying to hear the "Indy's done!" talk while at the same time everyone assumed NE was going right back to 2007 when all the evidence pointed against both.

Brady will be fine...eventually. It may not happen for a few more months though.

Honestly, I don't think Brady will be Tom Terrific until 2010. Give him time and he'll be fine, but he was out for a year.

He had the second most serious QB knee injury of the past five years, after Carson Palmer's. Carson just turned 26 when that happened. Brady was 31. There is a difference. Even if he returns to about 90% (I say he's about 70 now), he'll still be damn good. But I doubt that we will ever see that O again in full force.

However, I do not think that the injury had much to do with the loss. He never reacted well to insane pressure, like any QB (Peyton vs Pittsburgh '05 playoffs, Brady in SUper Bowl XLII). What is the difference now is that the O-Line is worse, so teams can pressure Brady more.

It's the exact same O-Line, to a man.

Light, Mankins, Koppen, Neal, Kaczur.

O-Line has deterirated in talent. First off, they were overrated before, but now they are mostly on the plus side of 30, and are nowhere near what they once were.

On an interesting side note, although I enjoy taunting you guys about market sizes, accents, and your perennial dearth of October baseball........you did beat a division opponent.

A division opponent in whose town I live.

These people are friggin suicidal down here. They hold the ball for FORTY FIVE MINUTES AND LOSE!

Now they have to go to San Diego on a short week. It's already 'f**k the fish......get with the Canes'.

Just do me a favor and beat the Jets.

King's last mailbag item is about the nets which keep kicks from going into the stands. He's not thinking. Yes, it wouldn't cost much to let fans keep the balls. But it would cost a ton for the legal judgment the first time the drunk rugby player plows over someone's grandmother diving into the scrum of other drunks to rip the ball away from the poor sucker who first tried to catch it.

You're gonna have to wait until 2 days after Christmas though.

So DZ, what's the early handicap on this game for the "18 best games of all time" list or "18 best 4th quarter comebacks" list?

Best Games: 8-10. It's not "important" enough to make the top 5.

Greatest Comebacks: That list is chronological, so it will definitely make the list.

Man, I love reading those lists.

the biggest argument against the nets being removed is that the kickers get to prep their own K balls now, and would likely be opposed to kicking them away.

Well yeah, and the liability. I guess. Doesn't stop them from letting baseballs fly into the bleachers though.

Am I the only one who was actually impressed with Chad's arm strength last night?

He had a moderate depth pass on an early (first?) drive and a few well thrown deep balls that Ginn didn't catch. They seemed to have more zing on them than half the stuff Schaub and Rivers threw Sunday.

That said, I do remember at least one sideline pass he couldn't deliver with authority. The ones on 3rd and short were fine but a deeper one just didn't have the legs.

Still, he wasn't quite as noodle armed as people were saying. Seemed that the lack of big play ability people were harping on was as much Ginn's fault as Chad's last night.

His 30 yard pass at the end of the game came up short. He doesn't have much of a gun.

Two things:
1) If you're running the Wildcat, you don't have a franchise quarterback. Would the Colts ever run the Wildcat? Not in a million years. Would the Patriots? Not in three quarters of a million years (mainly because that would be exactly the kind of thing Bill Belicheck would do, BECAUSE NO ONE EXPECTS BILL BELICHECK.) The Dolphins are now seeing why the Jets released Pennington. He's a serviceable QB, but he'll never take you to the promised land.

2) Interesting personal factoid: I found out from my dad this past weekend that I'm related, albeit distantly, to Patriots' Left Tackle Matt Light. He's from Greenville, OH, where my dad's dad's side of the family originally settled after coming over from Germany. The original German was "Licht", which is, rather obviously, German for "Light". His side of the family changed the name after my side of the family moved to Indiana.

So yeah. Next family reunion, I'm making my famous Lead Pipe To The Knee Casserole.

So I looked at every defensive alignment and play tonight (and completely forgot about the Yankees game... oops) and found some interesting things:

1) There were just as many of those short 5 yard move the sticks patterns thrown to Hayden/Lacey's side
2) The CBs gave that big cushion on almost every single snap. On those in which they pressed, they then all passed the receivers off to the safeties and played zone.
3) In the first half, those zone plays ended up flustering Pennington, one of which led to a sack. In the 2nd, he hit several of the frustrating seam/hole in zone receivers.
4) If we're going to pick on someone in the secondary, it should either be Bullitt (for being kind of lost and useless on several plays) or Bethea (for missing a lot of tackles). While Jennings seemed way off the ball on some of those short passes, it's not entirely his fault. I think his reads could be better, but if he starts jumping those every time he can get burned badly deep. We don't need a DeAngelo Hall or Asante Samuel clone. (Although if ever there is a time to make those gambles, it's against Chad Pennington.) Still, Hayden played those balls the exact same way. On one he had a much better read and jump though.
5) The only wildcat play where I think it was really the actual wildcat and the team seemed unprepared was the one that had the end around action in the 2nd half, with everyone faking right and then the ball coming all the way left. Otherwise, the difference between Wildcat and non-Wildcat was that the blocking was better. And usually not even because they have the extra man to account for - often Williams was nothing more than a decoy and didn't bother to block anyone - their most consistently effective play, the one the D was truly helpless against, was when the left Guard, 65, pulled right and both he and the fullback opened a clear running lane for Brown to the right, roughly where the RT was at the snap. This blocking scheme foiled the Colts even when they were prepared and in position. The other plays that frustrated us seemed less like poor preparation and more like a mishmash of their O line just plain dominating the front 4 (most snaps); or missed tackles (usually this was later though, ie turning a 5 yard gain into an 8 yarder). I'm sure there were a few gap and backside contain issues, but I don't know those assignments well enough to spot them unless they're just really obviously blown by overpursuit. I didn't see anywhere near as much of that as we used to have in 06, for instance. They seemed more disciplined. But thoroughly overmatched.

Anyway, getting back to Wildcat vs Standard, I wonder if Miami has spent an higher percentage of time practicing those plays than the others. Their blocking, particularly by that left guard, the fullback, and the tight ends, was much more dependable on those wildcat plays than on many of the standard ones. There's really no reason they couldn't have the exact same blocking while Pennington is handing off, though. And on some plays they did.

Ultimately, on the plays where the defensive tackles didn't get manhandled, the rest of the D made plays. When the DTs got dominated, the Dolphins had very productive running plays, usually getting to the third level untouched. It really was that simple.

I wrote a detailed and wordy play by play description of the D over in Shake's 1st Quarter post on SB if any of you are really bored and feel like reading it. But when you watch your own tape you'll see the same things. The Jennings thing is way overblown. The big issue was the interior line. Thankfully, I think both (and the penalties) can be fixed, and have confidence that they will, since it's still only the third week now.

I know that last post reads pretty poorly. I blame the fact that it's 3am.

The Dolphins game is just an extreme example of what we have seen for a couple of seasons now. It has simply illuminated the rest of the nation to how heavily the team relies on Manning. No surprises in the storyline for us. What did surprise me was Tiger Woods on the sideline. I'm not really a Tiger fan (partial to Philly Mick) but if Woods came out as a Colts and/or Manning fan that would lead me to reconsider. Since he lives in Fla. it was easy for him to get there but how cool would it be if he showed up at the Luke?

It's frustrating to watch constant 3rd down conversions, but there is a little bit of luck involved in converting nearly all of them. One of the bigger problems was the Miami line. They obviously blocked well on running plays, but they kept the pass rush mostly neutralized until Fumble Monster's forced fumble on the last drive.

I have an unnatural man crush on Gary Brackett, but I hate to say that a big part of the run defense's problem was he looked completely lost for most of the game and so did the safeties for the most part as well.

Luckily Peyton trumps all and end result is 2-0 while every other contender except the Ravens (maybe the Jets?) has at least one loss on the year already.

It would be cool if Lefty showed up, sure.

Just a few issues with what you had to say in recap...
Coaching doesn't mean anything?
Yes I'm extremely glad we have new coaches at those two spots. Coyer is a step above Meeks. It's nice to see a team blitz from the LB position (why they didn't do it in the Miami game? I don't know).
And while it's the players, its also the scheme. You can have all the talent in the world and sit in a prevent or cover2 and not do a damn thing.

Two of the big first downs for the Dolphins came on the blitz.

Cover two isn't the problem. Blitzing has not paid off this season at all.